My great-grandfather worked every day of his life, starting at the age of seven, and never owned a pair of shoes. By the time he was fifty, he had amassed a fortune of $1,000, which for the 1890’s would be worth about $100 billion today.

Then he was eaten by a pack of gerbils while trying to save a little boy who fell down a well.

There are no monuments to my great-grandfather, no songs that honor him, and no federal holiday that bears his name. But I know this, everything that happened to my great-grandfather was Barack Obama’s fault (except the good stuff. We can give Ronald Reagan credit for that.)

[Editor’s note: This was a random stream-of-consciousness Facebook comment I left this morning inspired by this article.]

Photo credit: “Gerbil close-up face” by Dan Foy from Nottingham, England [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.